


even cowboys get the blues

by firstaudrina



Category: Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-21 23:45:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11955222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Eli stands in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, cowboy hat tilted low over his eyes. Chas remains unimpressed.





	even cowboys get the blues

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://portions-forfox.livejournal.com/67360.html?thread=1115680). I never realized I had so many Chas feelings? Also I am shocked this pairing never even occurred to me? How could I have missed all the potential, _how_.

****Eli stands in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, cowboy hat tilted low over his eyes. He scuffs a boot along the ground.

Chas remains unimpressed.

"It's just rehab ended early," Eli says, like it was a party that dissipated unexpectedly.

"You escaped from rehab, didn't you," Chas says flatly.

Eli tilts the hat back and smiles, pure cowboy charm. "Now that's an unfair allegation," he says. "Nobody could prove it."

Chas is normally the type who absolutely could prove it, would make demanding calls and inquiries until he was served the truth like a particularly delicious meal. But Eli still has a purpling bruise on his cheek that Chas put there and the kids really like the new dog a lot.

"Well you can't stay here," Chas says. "Don't you have an apartment?"

Somehow Eli ends up in the guest room anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

Ari and Uzi cotton on to Eli like they do anyone new and exciting, because they're kids and even Chas would reluctantly allow that Eli is charismatic. He teaches them how to lasso – or attempts it, anyway, until Uzi lassos Chas' favorite lamp and the lessons come to an end. Eli cleans up all the broken pieces. Chas makes sure of it.

Eli regales the boys with all sorts of Western tales (Chas stays nearby so he can edit and censor when necessary, because he doesn't think the boys need to know about saloon girls yet), sometimes reading to them from his book as they go to sleep.

"What does 'friscalating' mean?" asks Ari.

"It's not a word," Chas says from where he's leaning in the doorway.

Eli raises his eyebrows in good-natured indignation. "Your father has no imagination," he says. Chas huffs a little before turning to leave, you can't please everyone and he's not going to try, and misses the smiles that blossom on his sons' faces.

 

 

 

 

 

"I thought you didn't even like Eli," Margot says.

She looks out of place sitting at the slick modern silver dining table, puffing away. Chas tried to tell her it was a non-smoking building but Margot wasn't interested.

"Not as much as you did, I guess," Chas says.

Only someone who'd known her for thirty years could perceive the very slightly pursing of her lips. "I guess," she says.

"He's cheaper than a nanny," Chas says. "And the boys like him a lot. Plus I run weekly drug tests, so."

"Wow," she says with no inflection. "You're really doing him a service, Chas."

Chas is satisfied, because he likes to be useful.

 

 

 

 

 

Eli sets up a typewriter in the breakfast nook, which is just rude, in all honesty. He's at least not picky about the boys having their oatmeal and proteins shakes around him, but Chas doesn't appreciate the mixing genres of technology and breakfast – working lunches are acceptable but working breakfasts are no way to start the day.

"Now, see," Eli is saying, "I know your Aunt Margot says it's a cheap, pandering technique, but I always like to start out a story with real punch. You know? A real eye-catcher."

"That is cheap," Chas says. Not that he knows anything about literature, except that Eli is definitely not it.

"I like it," says Ari. "It's exciting."

"I'd get bored otherwise," adds Uzi.

Eli grins at Chas over the typewriter, his battle seemingly won, and Chas frowns.

"This is why Eli is not a genius," Chas says, waiting for Eli's face to fall.

It doesn't. "In the program they taught me that it was okay to be not a genius," he says.

"You didn't even finish," Chas reminds him.

"Ah, well," says Eli. "There's that."

 

 

 

 

 

Eli has his feet up on the coffee table, which Chas hates, and his fringed jacket draped over himself like a blanket. His boots are in an untidy heap on the floor. Chas hates that too. At least Eli's knocked it off with the hat indoors, but the memory of it remains in his limp blonde hair, pressed close to his scalp with the phantom impression.

Eli says, "I liked Rachel a whole lot."

Chas glares at him. Chas is filing private paperwork into several drawers of several steel-gray filing cabinets. "Rachel didn't like you."

It's a lie. Rachel liked everybody because she was that kind of person, good and kind and optimistic. She was a high school algebra teacher. Everybody liked her too, which is especially rare with high school algebra teachers.

Eli seems unoffended. "She made me feel like one of the family, you know?"

"Well, you're not."

"It's because she wasn't a Tenenbaum either," Eli says. "Not really."

Chas looks up. "What are you talking about?"

"She knew what it was like to be on the outside," he says. "Looking in."

Rachel was an Evans. Chas met her in a train station. He was returning from a failed business venture; she was sending her little sister off to college, a spritely girl with mischievous eyes and a pixie cut. Rachel was a relatively simple figure in comparison, her long hair dark and straight, strands of it always getting in her eyes whether there was a breeze or not. Chas did not believe in love at first sight but he fell in love with Rachel immediately.

He never thought that she didn't belong.

"Did she say that to you?" he says now.

"More or less," says Eli. "She said, 'Eli, I know how you feel.' And she didn't need to say more than that. Because I knew, and she knew too."

Chas swallows hard, involuntary. "I'm going to bed," he says.

Eli raises his tumbler of whiskey in a goodnight.

 

 

 

 

 

"You're certainly spending a lot of time with Eli," Etheline says.

Chas shrugs. "He's watching the kids."

"Alright," says Etheline.

"It's the least he can do for killing our dog," says Chas.

 

 

 

 

 

Sparky, the new dog, quickly becomes Eli's partner in crime.

He teaches Sparky to play dead whenever Eli points finger-guns at him, and Sparky does it with such theatrical yips that the boys can be amused for hours. He starts to sleep in Eli's bed, a black-and-white lump standing out against the cowboy sheets.

"I cannot believe you have cowboy sheets," Chas says. "You are an adult."

After a while he stops asking when Eli is going to go home.

 

 

 

 

 

Margot leaves for a while, taking one bag and a portable typewriter with her. She puts on her next play in London. Incestuous Vices by Margot Tenenbaum.

"That's not pointed at all," says Eli.

Richie hunches into his tan blazer, a navy scarf around his neck and sunglasses hiding his face. "It's getting good reviews."

"Better than Eli," Chas feels moved to add. Eli's new book came out the same week, The Lonesome Outlaw. People said it was just a rehashing of his other work, no longer young or fresh. He dedicated it to Ari and Uzi, who each carry a signed copy to school with them every day to brag. They demand Eli read it to them every night after dinner.

"It's okay," Eli says, with a grin. "My best critics thought it was a smash."

Chas intends to shakes his head and sigh but finds that he almost smiles back instead.

A few days later, Richie says to Chas, "So I guess you're finally friends now."

"I wouldn't go that far," Chas says.

"It's not a bad thing," Richie says. "I think it's pretty nice. You haven't really had a friend since Rachel died."

Chas looks at him, scrutinizes him, and finds only Richie's new easy affection on display. Richie has the same sad eyes as a hound, the same tentative urge to please.

"You're right," Chas says. "It's not such a bad thing at all."

 

 

 

 

 

"Are you and Uncle Eli going to get married?"

Chas stops what he's doing to stare at his sons. "Who told you to call him Uncle Eli?"

"He did," says Ari, with that pre-pre-teen implication of _obviously_.

"So are you gonna marry him?" Uzi prods.

"What? No." Chas has to have a talk with someone about this. He's not sure who exactly, yet, but someone. "What gave you that idea?"

"Well, he lives with us," says Ari.

"So does Sparky, I'm not going to marry him." Which Chas can admit that's a little juvenile but nevertheless makes his point.

"We really like him," Ari continues. "He likes to talk to us and he taught Sparky how to sing along to 'Delta Dawn.'"

Impressive feats to a nine year old.

"I'm not marrying him," Chas says. Twin frowns appear on the faces of his sons.

The person Chas decides to have a talk with is Eli. "Why are you even here?" he asks, which is not what he meant to ask – Chas had intended something more along the lines of 'stop winning over my children so easily without my express consent.'

He and Eli were never really friends. Chas didn't have much time for Eli growing up and he assumed Eli felt the same. Eli used to annoy him, honestly, a chipper blonde presence always at Richie's heel. He and Margot used to joke about how Eli wanted Etheline to adopt him.

Well, Chas joked. Margot noted dryly. And she said things like, If they'll adopt me they'll probably adopt anyone.

"I didn't have any other friends," Eli says simply. "I was thinking of hot dogs and beans for dinner, what do you say?"

Chas opens his mouth and shuts it. Richie and Eli have been understandably distant since the Margot debacle, if that was even the word for it. But he didn't think that was where Eli's list of friends began and ended – weren't there other Western-obsessed literary-type people to glom onto?

No, he realizes, there probably weren't.

 

 

 

 

 

Chas could not get involved with the best friend ex-not-boyfriend of his brother and sister who are in love with each other.

It's unthinkable.

 

 

 

 

 

Eli still only wears patterned Western shirts, wide-brimmed hats and steel-spurred boots, tight designer trousers punctuated by clunky silver belt buckles, and lots of fringe. He calls female strangers "little lady" and all animals "darlin'." His face is so crooked that when he smiles it is almost straight.

"Rachel did like you, you know," Chas says begrudgingly. "She thought you were funny."

"I am funny," Eli says, with a sort of wondering confidence, like he's only just noticing.

Chas says, "I never realized," and for once is not making fun of Eli.

 

 

 

 

 

It's like the fight – Eli says something stupid and Chas loses his temper, wants to put his hands around Eli's throat and squeeze, except instead he puts his mouth on Eli's mouth and fists his hands in that stupid tumbleweed shirt collar. Eli sort of laughs and tries to put his hands on Chas, who jerks away.

"I don't want to talk about it," says Chas.

 

 

 

 

 

The next time they kiss Chas is furious too, and Eli tries to gentle him like a horse, all, "Whoa now, it's alright."

The worst part is Chas sort of does calm a little, even though he is not a horse, even though Eli has probably never been near a horse in person in his life.

"I think you've maybe got a problem with anger," Eli says, crooked face against Chas'. "You know they can deal with that at the program."

"I don't have an anger problem," Chas says, annoyed.

"It's okay," Eli says. He runs a hand over Chas' hair to the back of his neck, where he holds firm. He does it to the boys sometimes, and to Sparky too. "I don't mind."

And, well. Chas isn't so sure he minds either.


End file.
